Today President Barack Obama issued a proclamation in honor of women’s equality day. Read it and cheer!
WOMEN’S EQUALITY DAY, 2009
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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Today, our country renews its commitment to freedom and
justice for all our citizens. As we prepare to celebrate this
women’s day of equality, we reflect on the sacrifices once made
to allow women and girls the basic rights and choices we freely
exercise today. The future we leave to our daughters and
granddaughters will be determined by our willingness to build on
the achievements of our past and move forward as one people and
one Nation. The fight for women’s equality is not a woman’s
agenda, but an American agenda.
We honor the resilience, accomplishments, and history of
all women in the United States. We celebrate the courageous
women who fought to uphold a fundamental principle within our
Constitution — the right to vote — and in so doing, protected
the cornerstone of our vibrant democracy. These visionaries of
the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 sought to ensure that our
country lived up to its founding ideals. Although only one,
Charlotte Woodward, at the age of 81, had the opportunity to
exercise her newfound right, the struggle reminds us that no
righteous cause is a lost one. We also commemorate women like
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a poet and lecturer who formed
the National Association of Colored Women; Antonia Pantoja,
a tireless advocate of education equality within the Latino
community; Sarah Winnemucca, a voice for peace within the
Native American community; and Patsy Mink, author of Title IX
and the first woman of color and Asian American woman elected
to the United States Congress. These women’s talents, and the
contributions of countless others, built upon the framework of
1848 and forged paths for future generations.
Our Nation has come a long way since that ground-breaking
convention in New York. Women have occupied some of the most
significant positions in government. They have delivered
justice from the bench of our highest court, fought for our
country in foreign lands, discovered cures to diseases, and
joined the ranks of the greatest business leaders of our time.
Female college graduates now outnumber their male counterparts.
Women have sought equality through government, demonstrated
by the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and
the establishment of the White House Council on Women and Girls.
They have sought equality through advocacy, exemplified by the
efforts of thousands of women’s organizations. America has made
significant progress toward becoming the fair and just society
the suffragists once envisioned.
Yet, today, our work remains unfinished. Far too many
adult women remain mired in poverty. Women are still subject to
pervasive discrimination at school and harassing conduct in the
workplace. Women make, on average, only 78 cents for every
dollar paid to men. Underrepresented in many facets of our
more.
economic and public life, from government to boardrooms to
the sciences, women have yet to eradicate all barriers to
professional development.
We stand at a moment of unparalleled change and a time
for reflection and hope. We cannot allow the vibrant energy
and passionate commitment of our trailblazing women to fade,
and we can never forget the responsibility we bear to the ideals
of liberty and equality for all. Each generation of successful
women serves as a catalyst to empower, enlighten, and educate
the next generation of girls and boys, and we must devote
ourselves to promoting this catalyst for change now and in
the future.
On this Women’s Equality Day, we resolve to continue the
important work of our Nation’s foremothers and their successors,
and turn their vision of a more equal America into our reality.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in
me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby
proclaim August 26, 2009, as Women’s Equality Day. I call upon
the people of the United States to celebrate the achievements
of women and recommit themselves to the goal of true gender
equality in this country.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
twenty-fifth day of August, in the year of our Lord two thousand
nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America
the two hundred and thirty-fourth.
BARACK OBAMA
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